17 ms·

TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

569 points by consumer451 4y ago

consumer451 4y ago
https://archive.is/ap3on https://archive.is/ap3on
tremere 4y ago
I'm starting to become fatigued by all this TikTok news. Either ban the app or don't. Causing anxiety over TikTok without any action is the worst of both worlds.
- consumer451 4y ago
  It's an interesting problem to solve though. For one thing, there are lots of US investors who will lose money. Should they be made whole?
  - jorts 4y ago
    They should not. They should have known the risk in advance.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    That's not an interesting question. No, no they should not. And that would be true even if there were US investors. Just like we don't compensate AirBnB shareholders when cities outlaw short term rentals. But, there are no non-Chinese investors in Bytedance. There are US investors in Hong Kong (?) companies that have exposure to Bytedance and move 1:1 with Bytedance, but explicitly included in their risk analysis is that government action may zero out that 1:1 nature at any time by political action.
    - consumer451 4y ago
      > That's not an interesting question. It is very interesting to me to see if the US government is capable of putting the average citizen's welfare above that of heavy hitting investors. It would be a welcome change if they did. > ByteDance is financially backed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and Hillhouse Capital Group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        What relationship could banning TikTok possibly have to the average citizen's welfare?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - Kadin 4y ago
    Not an interesting question at all, IMO. The government is not required to protect you or make you whole, if you invest in an enterprise that the government later decides to prohibit, or makes illegal, or decides to regulate in some other manner. I mean, think that through for a second: if the government had to compensate everyone for the negative impact of legislation, it would be almost impossible to pass laws. If my town says I can't burn tires in my back yard, do they need to pay me to shut down my tire-burning operation? What if I don't even have a tire-burning operation, but I could have started one, except now I'm prohibited from doing so... did they impair the value of my property by prohibiting a potential use? What about all the other things I could have done with my property, absent any pesky zoning restrictions, Clean Water Act rules, or just centuries of common law precedent? Do they have to pay me for the impairment of each of them, each time a law is passed that eliminates a hypothetical option? No, of course not, because that would paralyze government and be ridiculous. The government has no responsibility to make anyone whole if they decide someone's business model is counter to the public good and make it illegal. It's on my investors to take into account the risk of legislation that might impact the business and factor that into their investment decisions and subsequent valuation of the business. If they do that poorly, or fail to recognize a legal risk, that's on them. This is literally why sovereign immunity is a thing.
    - slushh 4y ago
      How about foreign investors? [1] >Critics also state that treaties are written so that any legislation causing lost profits is by definition a treaty violation, rendering the argument null that only treaty violations are subject to ISDS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor%E2%80%93state_dispute_settlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor%E2%80%93state_dispute...
- HWR_14 4y ago
  So rather than exposing the cost/benefits of an app, you just want the government to make a decision about what methods of communication are available to everyone? And instead of making a thorough case why a particular method has to be banned for good reasons tangential to the content, you want them to make that choice and announce it? I think banning very invasive social media until it minimizes tracking is a reasonable option, but that's something that should be done by passing laws and public debate.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Better they openly do that than this constant covert hysterical press releasing to whip up public support for it.
  - go_prodev 4y ago
    Banning TikTok until it minimizes tracking pushes the blame onto TikTok (unfairly IMHO). Apps all have the same Android/iOS permissions to work with, so if there's really a problem, the Govt should consult with OS vendors on tightening controls across the board.
- jasmer 4y ago
  Don't ban it, just force the sale of US/European or non-Chinese division to an outside party and that's that. There's actually not that much economic downside. Having TT merged with Bytedance is not a big economic bonus. I can't believe that this was not done ages ago. There is hardly a loser here - it's just a 'required fork' of a business, everyone will be fine. We do this all the time with 'important' things, for a social media app, nothing will skip a beat, the kids can keep their funny songs.
- 1101010010 4y ago
  > I'm starting to become fatigued > Causing anxiety The news is literally designed to do that to you. Stop consuming so much of it for your own mental well-being, and that of everyone else you interact with.
- Zigurd 4y ago
  It benefits TikTok competitors.
- sneak 4y ago
  The type of banning of apps you propose is state-sponsored censorship. This is done in China as a routine matter, such as with protest or VPN apps.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  They couldn't use it as a distraction if they did that.
rvz 4y ago
Oh dear. I won't be surprised to see this being true since TikTok is just a worse version of Facebook/Instagram who has already admitted and shown evidence of them violating the privacy of its users [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5], and its defenders are just running out of excuses faster than a running tap at this point. Before anyone says 'All social media companies do this', If large social networks like Facebook have been fined in the billions of dollars for such repeated privacy violations, then given the size of TikTok, you might as well agree that for TikTok to continue to operate in the US, it must to pay a multi-billion dollar fine for such repeat offenses and abuses of its user's privacy simply on the grounds of the size of the many users on the platform. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-... [1] https://www.scmagazine.com/news/privacy/uk-tiktok-16m-fine-childrens-data-privacy-violations https://www.scmagazine.com/news/privacy/uk-tiktok-16m-fine-c... [2] https://fortune.com/2022/12/22/tiktok-data-privacy-blunder-china-bytedance-bans-journalist-accounts/ https://fortune.com/2022/12/22/tiktok-data-privacy-blunder-c... [3] https://futurism.com/tiktok-spy-locations-specific-americans https://futurism.com/tiktok-spy-locations-specific-americans [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65126056 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65126056 [5] https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/05/08/tiktok-lgbtq/ https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/05/08/tiktok-lgbtq/
Lucasoato 4y ago
I would be extremely surprised if a state-actor like China couldn’t access most US company data at will. If you can invest several billions and have thousands of people working to create a breach, no company is safe, not even AWS or Microsoft. In this case, that’s even way easier, the company is Chinese, the CCP can have this access lawfully, is this something unexpected? I’m much more concerned by the laziness of most western governments in understanding if this was a threat or not.
- burnished 4y ago
  I think their repeat public position was that the CCP could not have law access and did not have access. I don't think anyone believed it, but still
  - Haga 4y ago
    [dead]
- pydry 4y ago
  I would have been unsurprised if the US government hadn't already forced them to host with Oracle a year or two ago supposedly to prevent exactly this from happening. Is Larry Ellison a Chinese spy? He would probably have to either be complicit or criminally negligent to allow this to happen given he was given the contract precisely for this reason. I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about American chips being hacked that turned out to be entirely fabricated. And US insistence that "dumb" 5g aerials already vetted by national security agencies had to be banned (along with kit that was absolutely a legitimate risk) because they could potentially possibly harbor listening devices maybe.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    > I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about American chips being hacked Unless there is hard proof of anything I always assume news like these is the usual suspects warmongering.
  - aardvarkr 4y ago
m3kw9 4y ago
It’s widely known likely 99.9% chance they have access, but just the us law system needs good proof.
CSMastermind 4y ago
This seems sloppy. If I were to build an app that was popular in say Cuba or something I wouldn't leave myself technical gateways to access the data and manipulate things directly. That would leave a clear paper trail and open me up to some innocent engineer stumbling across what's happening. Rather I would embed trusted people into the company at low to mid-level positions of power, like software engineers, content moderators, etc. where they could quietly use their influence on shape things in ways that are favorable to my goals. I would do this with every company I could get them hired at not just the one making my app. If I really had a need to exert undue influence I would use a side-channel to communicate instructions to people at the company (potentially even the leadership) and rely on them to carry out the orders. Remoting in and changing things myself seems silly.
- Kadin 4y ago
  Sure, and that's probably happening as well. But it shows a level of not-giving-a-fuck if they're just leaving not-even-well-hidden "backdoors" in, so people in China can get access. It suggests to me that the software engineers writing this stuff don't really think of ByteDance US or the US version of TikTok as being any different from ByteDance China. Because of course they don't: I don't think ByteDance itself, or its leadership, does. The whole idea of separating the company internally is a sham, and it's almost always a sham when companies claim to do internal firewalling or controls like that. (See also: pre-2008 financial companies that did both consulting and accounting/audit, and claimed they never talked across that line. Of course they did!) TikTok is a shining example of both China being China (no real private/public sector separation, lying as standard practice, economic policy is just war by other means) and the US being the US (everything is for sale, everyone's loyalty can be rented, all laws are negotiable, workers / average people exist to be exploited rather than protected, if it's profitable it can't be that wrong)... and we wonder why it's a trainwreck for average users.
- schuke 4y ago
  From a Leninist bureaucratic perspective, a paper trail is exactly what someone wants as a mid-level official: if something goes wrong a paper trail transfers responsibility to her higher-ups, reducing the chance this person becoming a scapegoat. Especially useful if someone's caught in a intra-party power struggle, in an area dealing with foreign entities where waters are muddier. Trust is very rare in the Leninist party. Not sure if the same logic works in other governments though.
blueflow 4y ago
So, basically just the China version of the US Cloud Act?
- anaganisk 4y ago
  But it's the US, it's the bastion of democracy. Govt here doesn't put backdoors, doesn't sponsor crypto companies, doesn't target individuals and ship them to overseas camps to avoid torture laws. Wage fake wars. Doesn't use it's intelligence agencies to interfere with other countries. Oh!
  - bostonsre 4y ago
    For all our faults, we're not the ccp. Bashing America doesn't undo the horrors committed by the ccp. We're talking about an authoritarian regime that is currently committing genocide. Should we really just roll over and give them unfettered access to our markets while they are incredibly hostile to our companies and where we only get access by giving away ip?
    - bigcat12345678 4y ago
      [flagged]
    - mistermann 4y ago
      > We're talking about an authoritarian regime that is currently committing genocide. Which country has a larger body count in the last few decades?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - sneak 4y ago
      The US imprisons its ethnic minorities in inhumane camps that frequently result in death at a rate 17x that of China, per capita. The countries are way more alike than you think. Calling for more state censorship in the US brings them even more into alignment.
jasmer 4y ago
It'd be extremely naive to assume that they didn't have a back door, didn't have the ability to 'direct' TikTok to do as they required for pretty much anything, and didn't use it to further whatever their agenda is. The inverse problem is to think of TT as directly an agent of the CCP, which it is not. TT is a company that wants to make money, that exists in a regime where there is no effective rule of law, meaning the regime can do pretty much as it pleases, when it please, and they do do that, particularly for censorship, content control etc.. But otherwise, the company is left to it's own devices. Much like if you use Google or FB, you can be assured that the US Gov. will leverage that within the normal constraints of the US, which is to say for local policing warrants and judges, and for narrow issues of national security, well, probably 'anything goes' with respect to non-US citizens, 'almost anything goes' with respect to US citizens, but that ultimately the scope of the more acute stuff will be narrow, and ultimately there will be leakers. Aka Snowden and Assange sadly get a different form of justice, but at least it's a kind of justice and it's in the public domain. You can speak out against Biden all day long but if you leak sensitive docs, that's probably a line that will get you in trouble. Finally, we need to start to account for corporate surveillance.
grugagag 4y ago
Im more curious what tiktok data amouts to and how it could be used by CCP. I’ve heard of bans of Tiktok use by politicians and army bases and such. Without sensitive location data to some specific users but solely the young sharing memes, I wounder how CCP could use that data… Not a Tiktok user myself, if anyone could illuminate me on this it’s be great. For example does tiktok have direct messages from users to users that could be spied on? My naive assumption is that Tiktok is a meme sharing platform and timesink
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  It is a kompromat generator to blackmail the next Teixeira.
- mountainwalker 4y ago
  in my rudimentary understanding, the knowledge would be useful more in an aggregate nature. finding effective ways to target include/exclude propaganda and gathering real-time data around memes/info sharing topics that relate to whatever information campaigns they are currently running. lies seem to spread faster than the truth, and very few places are as actively in use as tiktok.
- aardvarkr 4y ago
  Imagine that a state actor would seek to flip a foreign National to their cause. You can do so with either a carrot or a stick or both. The carrot can be fancy dinners, free vacations, or access to what they want. The carrot can be threat of exposure of deep secrets, etc. Now imagine that there is an app that has the AMAZING ability to figure out EXACTLY what you like and don’t like. You haven’t used TikTok yourself so you don’t know it firsthand but this app is uncanny in its ability to feed you stuff that only you would find fascinating that you didn’t even know about yourself. In the wrong hands it can give incredible amounts of information on an individual’s interests at a level of detail that was previously impossible
  - crmd 4y ago
    And the 66% of US teens on TikTok are 66% of the next generation of US senators, presidents, cabinet members, military chiefs, etc. Imagine the competitive advantage of having a deep psychological profile for each of these personas of your geopolitical adversary.
Zigurd 4y ago
Who uses TikTok for sensitive information? Government access to TikTok user data is of limited additional value compared to whatever TikTok sells to large advertisers and analytics partners.
- partiallypro 4y ago
  When you couple this with the fact that China had secret police stations in the US trying to capture Chinese dissidents, you could use such data to track those people to kidnap them, regardless of if the information was sensitive on the app or not.
  - xtian 4y ago
    > China had secret police stations in the US trying to capture Chinese dissidents What's the evidence for this?
    - partiallypro 4y ago
      The recent busts in multiple countries, including one prominent one in New York City? https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/china-overseas-police-stations-intl-cmd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/china-overseas-police-s... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415 https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-charges-tied-to-chinese-outpost-in-new-york-city https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-c... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65537553.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65537553.amp https://www.newsweek.com/china-overseas-police-service-center-public-security-bureau-safeguard-defenders-transnational-crime-1764531 https://www.newsweek.com/china-overseas-police-service-cente... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/explainer-chinas-covert-overseas-police-stations https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/explainer-chin... https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/beijing-s-long-arm-china-s-secret-police-stations-in-europe-a-d6732094-ca32-4c0a-8e6f-58b395b946aa https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/beijing-s-long-ar...
      - 4y ago
amelius 4y ago
Meanwhile, the CCP can just open their huge wallets and pay US-based data-brokers for all the private information of US citizens that they ever dreamed of ...
- bioemerl 4y ago
  Please don't use the fact that there are other imperfections in the system to prevent this one from getting fixed.
  - scrum-treats 3y ago
    Please don't use your naivety as a shield from recognizing a purposeful "gap" in implementation, across all social media we consume in the US (as well as technological devices), as dictated by the US government.
  - amelius 4y ago
    You mean please don't fix this gigantic gaping hole, so that this much smaller hole gets fixed first and people forget about the bigger problem?
  - nabakin 4y ago
    I think they are bringing awareness to an additional issue rather than dismissing this one
    - bioemerl 4y ago
      They might be trying, but the end result will be a petty destruction of progress. "In order to make any change you must fix my much larger and harder to solve issue" will ensure that nothing ever gets done. In the face of just how serious this risk is, this sort of stance is self destructive and nearly malicious.
      - nabakin 4y ago
        Why can't you believe both are issues and be in support of the resolution of both?
xtian 4y ago
> "Mr. Yu observed a culture of lawlessness within the company," the suit says. "This ByteDance culture focused on growth at all costs. The attitude was to violate the law first, continue to grow, and pay fines later." Damn these dirty communists! That's not how we do business in Silicon Valley!
jsdeveloper 4y ago
Will you install a secuirty camera in your daughters room, specifically when the the camera comes from country with most leaked cam footage!(where various reports argue that State is involved in such leaks)
- 1101010010 4y ago
  Are there even IP cameras manufactured domestically to even choose? I have some inside my home (pointed at exterior doors; not inside bedrooms which seems borderline creepy and/or sadistic), but they're not connected to public networks and thus I don't consider them a risk.
  - jsdeveloper 3y ago
    I was giving an analogy. You won't risk installing any camera near to your kids, so is similar is the risk of handing mobile phone with a camera, which is capable of spying them/software that modulate them all the time! Blue Whale was an example which forced people to commit suicide. In TikTok's case the probability of immoral use is the most. As its has a connection with CCP, or is obliged to co-operate if required with CCP. Not juts USA, many countries had its suspecision with this APP. Ignoring all that why would any one wanted to risk there kids with this one specific APP ?
  - Kadin 4y ago
    Not at consumer price levels, no. There are companies that make security hardware here in the US, but the market is mostly very high-end government and military customers. And TBH mostly they are still using Chinese components, just assembling stuff here in the US and marking the price up enough that they can justify calling it 'made in USA' by virtue of the value-add. Sometimes the software is coded or at least audited, though. You can avoid the worst Chinese-made hardware if you look for "NDAA compliant" rather than US domestic manufacture. NDAA compliance means that a product isn't made by a number of prohibited Chinese suppliers who are known to be very thoroughly compromised (as opposed to the average level of compromise that you should assume most companies in China have... but China is a big place, so that difference isn't nothing). Axis and Bosch both have NDAA-compliant product lines.
1101010010 4y ago
Social media access to user data (whether foreign or domestic) is bad, but it is a distraction from the real evil: behavioral management at scale. When you can target specific demographics and control what they see 8-10 hours of the day, you can change what they think, say, do, and most importantly, how they vote. People are literally being programmed (euphemistically, "conditioned") by the specific triggers and stimuli with almost surgical precision, and completely unbeknownst to them. This is uncomfortable to recognize and discuss, so the conversation is sadly reduced to "China/AI is bad/evil" to further foment hate and division.
- password4321 4y ago
  Also on the front page: TikTok Feeds Teens a Diet of Darkness https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932387
- ChrisRR 4y ago
  Just look at how people were programmed into believing that masks were bad. At best they could save lives, at worst they were an inconvenience. But some people acted like you had just punched them in the face if you asked them to wear one And why? Because certain politicians and media outlets decided to randomly make it a political issue, and then suddenly you have people angrily spouting all kinds of crap rather than be slightly inconvenienced and have to smell their own breath
- capableweb 4y ago
  > When you can target specific demographics > control what they see > People are literally being programmed [...] by the specific triggers I hate marketing/PR as much as the next person, but have become part of daily life. How do we get rid of it? Outlaw the practice of trying to influence people by marketing? Edit: Rereading your comment I realize you're talking about something else, but I guess the same applies nonetheless.
  - millzlane 4y ago
    I feel like a large push from the AD council would be appropriate. (Not sure what the exact message would be) It feels like some of the largest industries rely on the masses being easily programmable. TV, Radio, Billboard, basically advertisements. Most are designed to make you give them your money. It's easy to spot and ignore when you realize it's happening.
bequanna 4y ago
Of course they did! The CCP requires a back door like this for all businesses operating in China.
rglover 4y ago
The levels of naivety around this stuff in the aftermath of Assange and Snowden continue to astound me.
lazyeye 4y ago
[flagged]
- robocat 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
  - lazyeye 4y ago
    [flagged]
mullingitover 4y ago
> Yu is a former engineering lead for ByteDance in the US who worked at the company between 2017 and 2018. This seems like an outrage bait lawsuit. The facts in the case are five years out of date, ByteDance has been through the wringer in the ensuing years and there’s no evidence that this backdoor exists in the current app.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  There's a ton of evidence that the TikTok app is used for tracking and to assume the CCP doesnt have access to a huge trove of personal data from its primary geo-strategic competitor is ridiculouly naive.
  - janalsncm 4y ago
    The lawsuit isn’t about tracking users. Pretty much every social media app tracks users, that’s how surveillance capitalism works. The lawsuit is also not about whether China has access to US citizens’ information. And even if it was, why should I, as a US citizen, worry about that? They can’t put me in jail or fire me. If you’re an American, you should be worried about what the US government knows about you. Anyways, the lawsuit is about an alleged backdoor. I can’t see how the plaintiff could know what present day code they’re running, and I can’t see why they waited so long to report it.
    - mullingitover 4y ago
      The lawsuit isn’t really even about backdoors or tracking, it’s for wrongful termination. When I say it’s outrage bait, I mean it’s making explosive allegations that ByteDance would really prefer not to deal with right now. It feels like a legal move calculated to pressure the company into a quiet and generous settlement.
- dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
  It's a former employee trying to extract a settlement from a company that is currently vulnerable these sorts of accusations.
jchook 4y ago
TikTok is allegedly staffed with dozens of ex-FBI, CIA, and US State Department officials who moderate content[1]. Somehow PRISM and the closed-doors FISA court hearings, Lavabit, etc seem to be collectively memory-holed by USians. Nowadays their anxiety about state surveillance is reserved for the "CCP". 1. https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-department-officials/284353/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-ru...
- scrum-treats 3y ago
  Agreed. It's also evident in the types of propaganda that appear, at least on my FYP. I guess they are running out of fresh spins on the old psyops wheel of manipulation.
- djkoolaide 4y ago
  The thing is, this is a pretty standard playbook for many intelligence-turned-civilian types. They become "consultants" for basically every industry. Not defending it, but it's not really unique to TikTok.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  The article is about TikTok.
- themodelplumber 4y ago
  > In the summer of 2021, he went straight from his top State Department job to become product policy manager for trust and safety at TikTok, a position that, on paper, he appears completely unqualified for. Earlier this year, Cardona left the company. Fascinating stuff in here. Wouldn't it be funny if the situation was any of these: - TikTok is some revolving-door communications center for off-the-record relations between USG and PRC - Your TikTok device is a node in a cluster that's being used for info-wars against some extraterrestrial threat as PRC and USG combine forces - Nah, USG just uses TikTok as a way to backdoor PRC
- j-bos 4y ago
  When did USian become a thing? Or rather, what's the etymological path into common use?
oblak 4y ago
Has anyone noticed that at least 99% of any "news", forum posts, etc. containing "CCP" are pure regurgitated political garbage? It cannot be just bots and psy ops. Real people do this sort of thing, too. Quite impressive how an entire population has been whipped into parroting this crap while pointing the finger. It wish it was funny but it isn't.
- awestroke 4y ago
  In what way is this article "political garbage"? Did you even read it?
- ok123456 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - baby 4y ago
    Well, it's probably because they don't call themselves CCP or CPC but 中国共产党
    - ok123456 4y ago
      Yes in Chinese. CPC is their preferred initialism in English.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > how an entire population has been whipped into parroting this crap It's not organic. Fairly apolitical people are being tricked into passively supporting it by the media illusion that it's an overwhelming consensus.
paxys 4y ago
When it comes to the CCP is it even a "backdoor"? They assert full LEGAL right to all data from companies in their jurisdiction. Everyone who operates in China, domestic or foreign, knows the costs of doing business.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > When it comes to the CCP is it even a "backdoor"? In the US we would refer to it as a responsibility, or a duty to protect.
andrewmcwatters 4y ago
I know there's a legitimate, serious discussion to be had here, but anecdotally all of my TikTok stream is cooking and memes. I'm pretty sure that's based on my viewing habits, because I love cooking and memes, but it does make these serious claims humorous at times.
- scrum-treats 3y ago
  I get the random insertion of AI-generated "Russian man" shouting hyper-conservative/far-right propaganda. I always leave a comment stating it is propaganda, and flag for removal. I see you government, trying to infiltrate my wholesome FYP of booktok, math, and physics.
- kunalgupta 4y ago
  All i get is the meme of Biden and Trump making beats, I don’t hate it though
SSLy 4y ago
Anyone has working link? BI 404's if you don't live in USA.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  https://archive.is/ap3on https://archive.is/ap3on archive.today either has it and/or will allow you to immediately request it
lopkeny12ko 4y ago
Half of the comments in this thread sound like they were written by CCP propaganda chatbots. A dead giveaway is the failure to address the topic at hand and immediately deflect to "but the USA does XYZ too!" No one is disputing such a claim, but that's also not what we're talking about here.
- archagon 4y ago
  Is there any value to this comment?
- hsjqllzlfkf 4y ago
  [flagged]
- kelipso 4y ago
  Lol. Dump all the US instances into the memory hole. Only bring it up when China does it. When you bring up how US does it too, it's "whataboutism". Have to say it's a great strategy for maintaining a narrative.
  - bostonwalker 4y ago
    Would China allow US to spy on hundreds of millions of its citizens everyday? Answer: no, reference the Great Firewall.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      The Great Firewall is to prevent Chinese people from speaking freely or reading unapproved things. It is not to protect Chinese people.
    - goolz 4y ago
      You don't actually believe that is what it is for right? This is sarcasm? I can not tell...
    - ssnistfajen 4y ago
      Your misunderstanding of what the GFW is for perfectly demonstrates why people like you don't deserve to have your opinions on China taken seriously.
WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
1) My primary concern will always be tied to governments with the ability to arrest me. 2) Because our personal data is trivial for govs/corp/LEO to purchase, it isn't obvious how this risk budges the needle.
pessimizer 4y ago
Even if they didn't have an official backdoor, they would have many backdoors by just placing people on staff (getting them hired in the normal way.) You can't stop state intelligence agencies from getting into any domestic data that they want, even with law (which they can just ignore.) Social media is full of 'ex-'state intelligence operatives, and objections to that situation are made out to be bizarre, or even banned from discussion on these same social networks. As far as I can tell, what we're supposed to think is that managing a social network, or any communications service, is within the same field as covert intelligence and surveillance, so of course that would be the hiring pool. Non-Chinese have little to fear from Chinese government monitoring of their activity on TikTok. Chinese people know their government (which openly censors, rather than laundering their censorship through covert means like the Five Eyes), and know how to act to keep safe.
- blululu 4y ago
  People have plenty to fear from state surveillance regardless of their nationality. The Indian Army had their troop movements monitored by the PLA via TikTok data during a recent conflict, so please don’t pretend that this is merely an abstract fear.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    If the Indian Army, in the midst of secret movements, is accessing social networks through their phones, everybody knows where they are and they are incompetent. Please don't pretend the problems of a military force playing on social networks are in any way related to normal people's problems. Ban TikTok from nuclear submarines, too, but I don't know why you would allow any other social network service on there either. I could be running it myself and sending all of your information to the Chinese government.
- bsder 4y ago
  > Non-Chinese have little to fear from Chinese government monitoring of their activity on TikTok. Chinese people know their government (which openly censors, rather than laundering their censorship through covert means like the Five Eyes), and know how to act to keep safe. This is so laughable that I don't even know where to start. How many Chinese individuals got busted for "corruption" because the Chinese Communist Party told people down the line to "do something" and conspicuous social media posters were easy targets? How many Chinese got busted for posting something that happened to contradict the party narrative about Covid? Even if a Chinese citizen understands how to act right now in the moment (and I don't even concede that), when Dear Leader decides to change the standards you can easily wind up on the wrong side of "proper and correct" with a nice big trail to justify shutting off your social credit. Surveillance is bad and evil and a threat. Period. It doesn't matter which government is doing it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
xkcd1963 4y ago
I mean, what's the surprise here?
drno123 4y ago
And US has a whole agency (NSA) dedicated to getting access to foreign data.
Animats 4y ago
Of course the party committee can access data. That's how China works under Xi.[1][2] Party committees had less presence in private companies post-Mao and pre-2003, but now they're back. Most larger non-state owned companies now have one, so the party can keep an eye on the private sector from the inside. They have roughly board-level authority. Nominally, the party committee represents the party members who work for the company. But they're not chosen by the employees; they're appointed by higher levels of the party. [1] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-the-role-of-chinese-communist-party-committees https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th... [2] https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-committees-in-chinese-companies/ https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-committ...
adultSwim 4y ago
I would point out that these claims have not been proven.
reaperducer 4y ago
This is the original reporting that Business Insider rewrote: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/technology/tiktok-bytedance-lawsuit-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/technology/tiktok-bytedan...
crmd 4y ago
In the old days, parents had an unwritten responsibility to steer their kids away from neighborhood kids who are a bad influence. Their kids aren’t running around in the neighborhood any more; the bad influences are social media algorithms.
sigy 4y ago
This should surpise no one.
efitz 4y ago
There are two main problems with social media, as it exists today: First, the company that operates the social media system, has access to data that exposes extremely personal information about the users, sometimes directly, and sometimes through inference based on user behavior. This naturally attracts parties that might benefit from this information, originally advertisers, but increasingly nation states. Personally, I think the solution to this involves both privacy legislation, and legislation that dramatically restricts what foreign entities can do in the United States, but I acknowledge this is very controversial. Second, the algorithms that the social media site uses to decide what content to presented to users is extremely susceptible to manipulation and to causing undesirable side effects. Even if the site operator is benign, the algorithm might magnify, extreme or emotional content in order to maximize engagement. We have seen this for several years now. And, of course, the site operators may choose to amplify messaging that they like or suppress messaging that they don’t. This may seem great if your values align with the site operator, but remember that operators change, e.g., Twitter. And of course, the site operator might be hostile to your values, e.g., TikTok. I think that the solution to this problem is actually much easier than the solution to the first problem. The solution to algorithmic problems is to make the algorithm opt-in. For example, when you join a social media site, you initially might be presented with the option to use company, curated prioritization, or to use time and subscription-based prioritization. However, social media sites should be encouraged or perhaps forced to allow community curated, prioritization, and allow community members to opt into, a community feed versus the company curated feed. I think we would see a small number of users and communities who would quickly come up with their own curated feeds, that would be popular with like-minded individuals.
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
The conversation here dances around the topic, but nobody really talks about it. The same applies to almost every media outlet. Everyone is talking about something, but that is mostly irrelevant and doesn't give any insight. Interesting pattern.
Russell_Senpai 4y ago
I don't have a Business Insider subscription and don't plan on getting one. Any important, linkable sources that I can read instead?
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  Good intuition. Business Insider is almost entirely a propaganda outlet and not actually a business publication, insider or otherwise. The claim comes from an ex-employee from 2018. Most people want it to be true, so it is. I have no idea. My default for TikTok stories is that NOTHING they can do is not first made possible by Apple and Google who take zero blame in any of this. That right there tells me it’s all game. TikTok/China is being used to trick people into supporting more domestic spying.
greatjack613 4y ago
[flagged]
jasonm23 4y ago
> TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges I feel like "Had" should have been the word in quotes here.
throwaway2990 4y ago
Tiktok doesn’t need a back door for CCP to have access. It’s Chinese law that requires bytedance to hand over any information requested without question. No one can dispute this. It’s literally the law in China.
rain1 4y ago
[flagged]

569 points by consumer451 4y ago

https://archive.is/ap3on https://archive.is/ap3on

I'm starting to become fatigued by all this TikTok news. Either ban the app or don't. Causing anxiety over TikTok without any action is the worst of both worlds.

consumer451 4y ago
It's an interesting problem to solve though. For one thing, there are lots of US investors who will lose money. Should they be made whole?
- jorts 4y ago
  They should not. They should have known the risk in advance.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  That's not an interesting question. No, no they should not. And that would be true even if there were US investors. Just like we don't compensate AirBnB shareholders when cities outlaw short term rentals. But, there are no non-Chinese investors in Bytedance. There are US investors in Hong Kong (?) companies that have exposure to Bytedance and move 1:1 with Bytedance, but explicitly included in their risk analysis is that government action may zero out that 1:1 nature at any time by political action.
  - consumer451 4y ago
    > That's not an interesting question. It is very interesting to me to see if the US government is capable of putting the average citizen's welfare above that of heavy hitting investors. It would be a welcome change if they did. > ByteDance is financially backed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and Hillhouse Capital Group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      What relationship could banning TikTok possibly have to the average citizen's welfare?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- Kadin 4y ago
  Not an interesting question at all, IMO. The government is not required to protect you or make you whole, if you invest in an enterprise that the government later decides to prohibit, or makes illegal, or decides to regulate in some other manner. I mean, think that through for a second: if the government had to compensate everyone for the negative impact of legislation, it would be almost impossible to pass laws. If my town says I can't burn tires in my back yard, do they need to pay me to shut down my tire-burning operation? What if I don't even have a tire-burning operation, but I could have started one, except now I'm prohibited from doing so... did they impair the value of my property by prohibiting a potential use? What about all the other things I could have done with my property, absent any pesky zoning restrictions, Clean Water Act rules, or just centuries of common law precedent? Do they have to pay me for the impairment of each of them, each time a law is passed that eliminates a hypothetical option? No, of course not, because that would paralyze government and be ridiculous. The government has no responsibility to make anyone whole if they decide someone's business model is counter to the public good and make it illegal. It's on my investors to take into account the risk of legislation that might impact the business and factor that into their investment decisions and subsequent valuation of the business. If they do that poorly, or fail to recognize a legal risk, that's on them. This is literally why sovereign immunity is a thing.
  - slushh 4y ago
    How about foreign investors? [1] >Critics also state that treaties are written so that any legislation causing lost profits is by definition a treaty violation, rendering the argument null that only treaty violations are subject to ISDS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor%E2%80%93state_dispute_settlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor%E2%80%93state_dispute...
HWR_14 4y ago
So rather than exposing the cost/benefits of an app, you just want the government to make a decision about what methods of communication are available to everyone? And instead of making a thorough case why a particular method has to be banned for good reasons tangential to the content, you want them to make that choice and announce it? I think banning very invasive social media until it minimizes tracking is a reasonable option, but that's something that should be done by passing laws and public debate.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Better they openly do that than this constant covert hysterical press releasing to whip up public support for it.
- go_prodev 4y ago
  Banning TikTok until it minimizes tracking pushes the blame onto TikTok (unfairly IMHO). Apps all have the same Android/iOS permissions to work with, so if there's really a problem, the Govt should consult with OS vendors on tightening controls across the board.
jasmer 4y ago
Don't ban it, just force the sale of US/European or non-Chinese division to an outside party and that's that. There's actually not that much economic downside. Having TT merged with Bytedance is not a big economic bonus. I can't believe that this was not done ages ago. There is hardly a loser here - it's just a 'required fork' of a business, everyone will be fine. We do this all the time with 'important' things, for a social media app, nothing will skip a beat, the kids can keep their funny songs.
1101010010 4y ago
> I'm starting to become fatigued > Causing anxiety The news is literally designed to do that to you. Stop consuming so much of it for your own mental well-being, and that of everyone else you interact with.
Zigurd 4y ago
It benefits TikTok competitors.
sneak 4y ago
The type of banning of apps you propose is state-sponsored censorship. This is done in China as a routine matter, such as with protest or VPN apps.
RobotToaster 4y ago
They couldn't use it as a distraction if they did that.

rvz 4y ago

Oh dear. I won't be surprised to see this being true since TikTok is just a worse version of Facebook/Instagram who has already admitted and shown evidence of them violating the privacy of its users [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5], and its defenders are just running out of excuses faster than a running tap at this point. Before anyone says 'All social media companies do this', If large social networks like Facebook have been fined in the billions of dollars for such repeated privacy violations, then given the size of TikTok, you might as well agree that for TikTok to continue to operate in the US, it must to pay a multi-billion dollar fine for such repeat offenses and abuses of its user's privacy simply on the grounds of the size of the many users on the platform. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-... [1] https://www.scmagazine.com/news/privacy/uk-tiktok-16m-fine-childrens-data-privacy-violations https://www.scmagazine.com/news/privacy/uk-tiktok-16m-fine-c... [2] https://fortune.com/2022/12/22/tiktok-data-privacy-blunder-china-bytedance-bans-journalist-accounts/ https://fortune.com/2022/12/22/tiktok-data-privacy-blunder-c... [3] https://futurism.com/tiktok-spy-locations-specific-americans https://futurism.com/tiktok-spy-locations-specific-americans [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65126056 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65126056 [5] https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/05/08/tiktok-lgbtq/ https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/05/08/tiktok-lgbtq/

Lucasoato 4y ago

I would be extremely surprised if a state-actor like China couldn’t access most US company data at will. If you can invest several billions and have thousands of people working to create a breach, no company is safe, not even AWS or Microsoft. In this case, that’s even way easier, the company is Chinese, the CCP can have this access lawfully, is this something unexpected? I’m much more concerned by the laziness of most western governments in understanding if this was a threat or not.

burnished 4y ago
I think their repeat public position was that the CCP could not have law access and did not have access. I don't think anyone believed it, but still
- Haga 4y ago
  [dead]
pydry 4y ago
I would have been unsurprised if the US government hadn't already forced them to host with Oracle a year or two ago supposedly to prevent exactly this from happening. Is Larry Ellison a Chinese spy? He would probably have to either be complicit or criminally negligent to allow this to happen given he was given the contract precisely for this reason. I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about American chips being hacked that turned out to be entirely fabricated. And US insistence that "dumb" 5g aerials already vetted by national security agencies had to be banned (along with kit that was absolutely a legitimate risk) because they could potentially possibly harbor listening devices maybe.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  > I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about American chips being hacked Unless there is hard proof of anything I always assume news like these is the usual suspects warmongering.
- aardvarkr 4y ago

m3kw9 4y ago

It’s widely known likely 99.9% chance they have access, but just the us law system needs good proof.

CSMastermind 4y ago

This seems sloppy. If I were to build an app that was popular in say Cuba or something I wouldn't leave myself technical gateways to access the data and manipulate things directly. That would leave a clear paper trail and open me up to some innocent engineer stumbling across what's happening. Rather I would embed trusted people into the company at low to mid-level positions of power, like software engineers, content moderators, etc. where they could quietly use their influence on shape things in ways that are favorable to my goals. I would do this with every company I could get them hired at not just the one making my app. If I really had a need to exert undue influence I would use a side-channel to communicate instructions to people at the company (potentially even the leadership) and rely on them to carry out the orders. Remoting in and changing things myself seems silly.

Kadin 4y ago
Sure, and that's probably happening as well. But it shows a level of not-giving-a-fuck if they're just leaving not-even-well-hidden "backdoors" in, so people in China can get access. It suggests to me that the software engineers writing this stuff don't really think of ByteDance US or the US version of TikTok as being any different from ByteDance China. Because of course they don't: I don't think ByteDance itself, or its leadership, does. The whole idea of separating the company internally is a sham, and it's almost always a sham when companies claim to do internal firewalling or controls like that. (See also: pre-2008 financial companies that did both consulting and accounting/audit, and claimed they never talked across that line. Of course they did!) TikTok is a shining example of both China being China (no real private/public sector separation, lying as standard practice, economic policy is just war by other means) and the US being the US (everything is for sale, everyone's loyalty can be rented, all laws are negotiable, workers / average people exist to be exploited rather than protected, if it's profitable it can't be that wrong)... and we wonder why it's a trainwreck for average users.
schuke 4y ago
From a Leninist bureaucratic perspective, a paper trail is exactly what someone wants as a mid-level official: if something goes wrong a paper trail transfers responsibility to her higher-ups, reducing the chance this person becoming a scapegoat. Especially useful if someone's caught in a intra-party power struggle, in an area dealing with foreign entities where waters are muddier. Trust is very rare in the Leninist party. Not sure if the same logic works in other governments though.

blueflow 4y ago

So, basically just the China version of the US Cloud Act?

anaganisk 4y ago
But it's the US, it's the bastion of democracy. Govt here doesn't put backdoors, doesn't sponsor crypto companies, doesn't target individuals and ship them to overseas camps to avoid torture laws. Wage fake wars. Doesn't use it's intelligence agencies to interfere with other countries. Oh!
- bostonsre 4y ago
  For all our faults, we're not the ccp. Bashing America doesn't undo the horrors committed by the ccp. We're talking about an authoritarian regime that is currently committing genocide. Should we really just roll over and give them unfettered access to our markets while they are incredibly hostile to our companies and where we only get access by giving away ip?
  - bigcat12345678 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > We're talking about an authoritarian regime that is currently committing genocide. Which country has a larger body count in the last few decades?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - sneak 4y ago
    The US imprisons its ethnic minorities in inhumane camps that frequently result in death at a rate 17x that of China, per capita. The countries are way more alike than you think. Calling for more state censorship in the US brings them even more into alignment.

jasmer 4y ago

It'd be extremely naive to assume that they didn't have a back door, didn't have the ability to 'direct' TikTok to do as they required for pretty much anything, and didn't use it to further whatever their agenda is. The inverse problem is to think of TT as directly an agent of the CCP, which it is not. TT is a company that wants to make money, that exists in a regime where there is no effective rule of law, meaning the regime can do pretty much as it pleases, when it please, and they do do that, particularly for censorship, content control etc.. But otherwise, the company is left to it's own devices. Much like if you use Google or FB, you can be assured that the US Gov. will leverage that within the normal constraints of the US, which is to say for local policing warrants and judges, and for narrow issues of national security, well, probably 'anything goes' with respect to non-US citizens, 'almost anything goes' with respect to US citizens, but that ultimately the scope of the more acute stuff will be narrow, and ultimately there will be leakers. Aka Snowden and Assange sadly get a different form of justice, but at least it's a kind of justice and it's in the public domain. You can speak out against Biden all day long but if you leak sensitive docs, that's probably a line that will get you in trouble. Finally, we need to start to account for corporate surveillance.

grugagag 4y ago

Im more curious what tiktok data amouts to and how it could be used by CCP. I’ve heard of bans of Tiktok use by politicians and army bases and such. Without sensitive location data to some specific users but solely the young sharing memes, I wounder how CCP could use that data… Not a Tiktok user myself, if anyone could illuminate me on this it’s be great. For example does tiktok have direct messages from users to users that could be spied on? My naive assumption is that Tiktok is a meme sharing platform and timesink

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
It is a kompromat generator to blackmail the next Teixeira.
mountainwalker 4y ago
in my rudimentary understanding, the knowledge would be useful more in an aggregate nature. finding effective ways to target include/exclude propaganda and gathering real-time data around memes/info sharing topics that relate to whatever information campaigns they are currently running. lies seem to spread faster than the truth, and very few places are as actively in use as tiktok.
aardvarkr 4y ago
Imagine that a state actor would seek to flip a foreign National to their cause. You can do so with either a carrot or a stick or both. The carrot can be fancy dinners, free vacations, or access to what they want. The carrot can be threat of exposure of deep secrets, etc. Now imagine that there is an app that has the AMAZING ability to figure out EXACTLY what you like and don’t like. You haven’t used TikTok yourself so you don’t know it firsthand but this app is uncanny in its ability to feed you stuff that only you would find fascinating that you didn’t even know about yourself. In the wrong hands it can give incredible amounts of information on an individual’s interests at a level of detail that was previously impossible
- crmd 4y ago
  And the 66% of US teens on TikTok are 66% of the next generation of US senators, presidents, cabinet members, military chiefs, etc. Imagine the competitive advantage of having a deep psychological profile for each of these personas of your geopolitical adversary.

Zigurd 4y ago

Who uses TikTok for sensitive information? Government access to TikTok user data is of limited additional value compared to whatever TikTok sells to large advertisers and analytics partners.

partiallypro 4y ago
When you couple this with the fact that China had secret police stations in the US trying to capture Chinese dissidents, you could use such data to track those people to kidnap them, regardless of if the information was sensitive on the app or not.
- xtian 4y ago
  > China had secret police stations in the US trying to capture Chinese dissidents What's the evidence for this?
  - partiallypro 4y ago
    The recent busts in multiple countries, including one prominent one in New York City? https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/china-overseas-police-stations-intl-cmd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/china-overseas-police-s... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415 https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-charges-tied-to-chinese-outpost-in-new-york-city https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-c... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65537553.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65537553.amp https://www.newsweek.com/china-overseas-police-service-center-public-security-bureau-safeguard-defenders-transnational-crime-1764531 https://www.newsweek.com/china-overseas-police-service-cente... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/explainer-chinas-covert-overseas-police-stations https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/explainer-chin... https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/beijing-s-long-arm-china-s-secret-police-stations-in-europe-a-d6732094-ca32-4c0a-8e6f-58b395b946aa https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/beijing-s-long-ar...
    - 4y ago

amelius 4y ago

Meanwhile, the CCP can just open their huge wallets and pay US-based data-brokers for all the private information of US citizens that they ever dreamed of ...

bioemerl 4y ago
Please don't use the fact that there are other imperfections in the system to prevent this one from getting fixed.
- scrum-treats 3y ago
  Please don't use your naivety as a shield from recognizing a purposeful "gap" in implementation, across all social media we consume in the US (as well as technological devices), as dictated by the US government.
- amelius 4y ago
  You mean please don't fix this gigantic gaping hole, so that this much smaller hole gets fixed first and people forget about the bigger problem?
- nabakin 4y ago
  I think they are bringing awareness to an additional issue rather than dismissing this one
  - bioemerl 4y ago
    They might be trying, but the end result will be a petty destruction of progress. "In order to make any change you must fix my much larger and harder to solve issue" will ensure that nothing ever gets done. In the face of just how serious this risk is, this sort of stance is self destructive and nearly malicious.
    - nabakin 4y ago
      Why can't you believe both are issues and be in support of the resolution of both?

xtian 4y ago

> "Mr. Yu observed a culture of lawlessness within the company," the suit says. "This ByteDance culture focused on growth at all costs. The attitude was to violate the law first, continue to grow, and pay fines later." Damn these dirty communists! That's not how we do business in Silicon Valley!

jsdeveloper 4y ago

Will you install a secuirty camera in your daughters room, specifically when the the camera comes from country with most leaked cam footage!(where various reports argue that State is involved in such leaks)

1101010010 4y ago
Are there even IP cameras manufactured domestically to even choose? I have some inside my home (pointed at exterior doors; not inside bedrooms which seems borderline creepy and/or sadistic), but they're not connected to public networks and thus I don't consider them a risk.
- jsdeveloper 3y ago
  I was giving an analogy. You won't risk installing any camera near to your kids, so is similar is the risk of handing mobile phone with a camera, which is capable of spying them/software that modulate them all the time! Blue Whale was an example which forced people to commit suicide. In TikTok's case the probability of immoral use is the most. As its has a connection with CCP, or is obliged to co-operate if required with CCP. Not juts USA, many countries had its suspecision with this APP. Ignoring all that why would any one wanted to risk there kids with this one specific APP ?
- Kadin 4y ago
  Not at consumer price levels, no. There are companies that make security hardware here in the US, but the market is mostly very high-end government and military customers. And TBH mostly they are still using Chinese components, just assembling stuff here in the US and marking the price up enough that they can justify calling it 'made in USA' by virtue of the value-add. Sometimes the software is coded or at least audited, though. You can avoid the worst Chinese-made hardware if you look for "NDAA compliant" rather than US domestic manufacture. NDAA compliance means that a product isn't made by a number of prohibited Chinese suppliers who are known to be very thoroughly compromised (as opposed to the average level of compromise that you should assume most companies in China have... but China is a big place, so that difference isn't nothing). Axis and Bosch both have NDAA-compliant product lines.

1101010010 4y ago

Social media access to user data (whether foreign or domestic) is bad, but it is a distraction from the real evil: behavioral management at scale. When you can target specific demographics and control what they see 8-10 hours of the day, you can change what they think, say, do, and most importantly, how they vote. People are literally being programmed (euphemistically, "conditioned") by the specific triggers and stimuli with almost surgical precision, and completely unbeknownst to them. This is uncomfortable to recognize and discuss, so the conversation is sadly reduced to "China/AI is bad/evil" to further foment hate and division.

password4321 4y ago
Also on the front page: TikTok Feeds Teens a Diet of Darkness https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932387
ChrisRR 4y ago
Just look at how people were programmed into believing that masks were bad. At best they could save lives, at worst they were an inconvenience. But some people acted like you had just punched them in the face if you asked them to wear one And why? Because certain politicians and media outlets decided to randomly make it a political issue, and then suddenly you have people angrily spouting all kinds of crap rather than be slightly inconvenienced and have to smell their own breath
capableweb 4y ago
> When you can target specific demographics > control what they see > People are literally being programmed [...] by the specific triggers I hate marketing/PR as much as the next person, but have become part of daily life. How do we get rid of it? Outlaw the practice of trying to influence people by marketing? Edit: Rereading your comment I realize you're talking about something else, but I guess the same applies nonetheless.
- millzlane 4y ago
  I feel like a large push from the AD council would be appropriate. (Not sure what the exact message would be) It feels like some of the largest industries rely on the masses being easily programmable. TV, Radio, Billboard, basically advertisements. Most are designed to make you give them your money. It's easy to spot and ignore when you realize it's happening.

bequanna 4y ago

Of course they did! The CCP requires a back door like this for all businesses operating in China.

rglover 4y ago

The levels of naivety around this stuff in the aftermath of Assange and Snowden continue to astound me.

lazyeye 4y ago

[flagged]

robocat 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  [flagged]

mullingitover 4y ago

> Yu is a former engineering lead for ByteDance in the US who worked at the company between 2017 and 2018. This seems like an outrage bait lawsuit. The facts in the case are five years out of date, ByteDance has been through the wringer in the ensuing years and there’s no evidence that this backdoor exists in the current app.

lazyeye 4y ago
There's a ton of evidence that the TikTok app is used for tracking and to assume the CCP doesnt have access to a huge trove of personal data from its primary geo-strategic competitor is ridiculouly naive.
- janalsncm 4y ago
  The lawsuit isn’t about tracking users. Pretty much every social media app tracks users, that’s how surveillance capitalism works. The lawsuit is also not about whether China has access to US citizens’ information. And even if it was, why should I, as a US citizen, worry about that? They can’t put me in jail or fire me. If you’re an American, you should be worried about what the US government knows about you. Anyways, the lawsuit is about an alleged backdoor. I can’t see how the plaintiff could know what present day code they’re running, and I can’t see why they waited so long to report it.
  - mullingitover 4y ago
    The lawsuit isn’t really even about backdoors or tracking, it’s for wrongful termination. When I say it’s outrage bait, I mean it’s making explosive allegations that ByteDance would really prefer not to deal with right now. It feels like a legal move calculated to pressure the company into a quiet and generous settlement.
dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
It's a former employee trying to extract a settlement from a company that is currently vulnerable these sorts of accusations.

jchook 4y ago

TikTok is allegedly staffed with dozens of ex-FBI, CIA, and US State Department officials who moderate content[1]. Somehow PRISM and the closed-doors FISA court hearings, Lavabit, etc seem to be collectively memory-holed by USians. Nowadays their anxiety about state surveillance is reserved for the "CCP". 1. https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-department-officials/284353/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-ru...

scrum-treats 3y ago
Agreed. It's also evident in the types of propaganda that appear, at least on my FYP. I guess they are running out of fresh spins on the old psyops wheel of manipulation.
djkoolaide 4y ago
The thing is, this is a pretty standard playbook for many intelligence-turned-civilian types. They become "consultants" for basically every industry. Not defending it, but it's not really unique to TikTok.
lazyeye 4y ago
The article is about TikTok.
themodelplumber 4y ago
> In the summer of 2021, he went straight from his top State Department job to become product policy manager for trust and safety at TikTok, a position that, on paper, he appears completely unqualified for. Earlier this year, Cardona left the company. Fascinating stuff in here. Wouldn't it be funny if the situation was any of these: - TikTok is some revolving-door communications center for off-the-record relations between USG and PRC - Your TikTok device is a node in a cluster that's being used for info-wars against some extraterrestrial threat as PRC and USG combine forces - Nah, USG just uses TikTok as a way to backdoor PRC
j-bos 4y ago
When did USian become a thing? Or rather, what's the etymological path into common use?

oblak 4y ago

Has anyone noticed that at least 99% of any "news", forum posts, etc. containing "CCP" are pure regurgitated political garbage? It cannot be just bots and psy ops. Real people do this sort of thing, too. Quite impressive how an entire population has been whipped into parroting this crap while pointing the finger. It wish it was funny but it isn't.

awestroke 4y ago
In what way is this article "political garbage"? Did you even read it?
ok123456 4y ago
[flagged]
- baby 4y ago
  Well, it's probably because they don't call themselves CCP or CPC but 中国共产党
  - ok123456 4y ago
    Yes in Chinese. CPC is their preferred initialism in English.
pessimizer 4y ago
> how an entire population has been whipped into parroting this crap It's not organic. Fairly apolitical people are being tricked into passively supporting it by the media illusion that it's an overwhelming consensus.

paxys 4y ago

When it comes to the CCP is it even a "backdoor"? They assert full LEGAL right to all data from companies in their jurisdiction. Everyone who operates in China, domestic or foreign, knows the costs of doing business.

pessimizer 4y ago
> When it comes to the CCP is it even a "backdoor"? In the US we would refer to it as a responsibility, or a duty to protect.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago

I know there's a legitimate, serious discussion to be had here, but anecdotally all of my TikTok stream is cooking and memes. I'm pretty sure that's based on my viewing habits, because I love cooking and memes, but it does make these serious claims humorous at times.

scrum-treats 3y ago
I get the random insertion of AI-generated "Russian man" shouting hyper-conservative/far-right propaganda. I always leave a comment stating it is propaganda, and flag for removal. I see you government, trying to infiltrate my wholesome FYP of booktok, math, and physics.
kunalgupta 4y ago
All i get is the meme of Biden and Trump making beats, I don’t hate it though

SSLy 4y ago

Anyone has working link? BI 404's if you don't live in USA.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
https://archive.is/ap3on https://archive.is/ap3on archive.today either has it and/or will allow you to immediately request it

lopkeny12ko 4y ago

Half of the comments in this thread sound like they were written by CCP propaganda chatbots. A dead giveaway is the failure to address the topic at hand and immediately deflect to "but the USA does XYZ too!" No one is disputing such a claim, but that's also not what we're talking about here.

archagon 4y ago
Is there any value to this comment?
hsjqllzlfkf 4y ago
[flagged]
kelipso 4y ago
Lol. Dump all the US instances into the memory hole. Only bring it up when China does it. When you bring up how US does it too, it's "whataboutism". Have to say it's a great strategy for maintaining a narrative.
- bostonwalker 4y ago
  Would China allow US to spy on hundreds of millions of its citizens everyday? Answer: no, reference the Great Firewall.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    The Great Firewall is to prevent Chinese people from speaking freely or reading unapproved things. It is not to protect Chinese people.
  - goolz 4y ago
    You don't actually believe that is what it is for right? This is sarcasm? I can not tell...
  - ssnistfajen 4y ago
    Your misunderstanding of what the GFW is for perfectly demonstrates why people like you don't deserve to have your opinions on China taken seriously.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago

1) My primary concern will always be tied to governments with the ability to arrest me. 2) Because our personal data is trivial for govs/corp/LEO to purchase, it isn't obvious how this risk budges the needle.

pessimizer 4y ago

Even if they didn't have an official backdoor, they would have many backdoors by just placing people on staff (getting them hired in the normal way.) You can't stop state intelligence agencies from getting into any domestic data that they want, even with law (which they can just ignore.) Social media is full of 'ex-'state intelligence operatives, and objections to that situation are made out to be bizarre, or even banned from discussion on these same social networks. As far as I can tell, what we're supposed to think is that managing a social network, or any communications service, is within the same field as covert intelligence and surveillance, so of course that would be the hiring pool. Non-Chinese have little to fear from Chinese government monitoring of their activity on TikTok. Chinese people know their government (which openly censors, rather than laundering their censorship through covert means like the Five Eyes), and know how to act to keep safe.

blululu 4y ago
People have plenty to fear from state surveillance regardless of their nationality. The Indian Army had their troop movements monitored by the PLA via TikTok data during a recent conflict, so please don’t pretend that this is merely an abstract fear.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  If the Indian Army, in the midst of secret movements, is accessing social networks through their phones, everybody knows where they are and they are incompetent. Please don't pretend the problems of a military force playing on social networks are in any way related to normal people's problems. Ban TikTok from nuclear submarines, too, but I don't know why you would allow any other social network service on there either. I could be running it myself and sending all of your information to the Chinese government.
bsder 4y ago
> Non-Chinese have little to fear from Chinese government monitoring of their activity on TikTok. Chinese people know their government (which openly censors, rather than laundering their censorship through covert means like the Five Eyes), and know how to act to keep safe. This is so laughable that I don't even know where to start. How many Chinese individuals got busted for "corruption" because the Chinese Communist Party told people down the line to "do something" and conspicuous social media posters were easy targets? How many Chinese got busted for posting something that happened to contradict the party narrative about Covid? Even if a Chinese citizen understands how to act right now in the moment (and I don't even concede that), when Dear Leader decides to change the standards you can easily wind up on the wrong side of "proper and correct" with a nice big trail to justify shutting off your social credit. Surveillance is bad and evil and a threat. Period. It doesn't matter which government is doing it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

xkcd1963 4y ago

I mean, what's the surprise here?

drno123 4y ago

And US has a whole agency (NSA) dedicated to getting access to foreign data.

Animats 4y ago

Of course the party committee can access data. That's how China works under Xi.[1][2] Party committees had less presence in private companies post-Mao and pre-2003, but now they're back. Most larger non-state owned companies now have one, so the party can keep an eye on the private sector from the inside. They have roughly board-level authority. Nominally, the party committee represents the party members who work for the company. But they're not chosen by the employees; they're appointed by higher levels of the party. [1] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-the-role-of-chinese-communist-party-committees https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th... [2] https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-committees-in-chinese-companies/ https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-committ...

adultSwim 4y ago

I would point out that these claims have not been proven.

reaperducer 4y ago

This is the original reporting that Business Insider rewrote: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/technology/tiktok-bytedance-lawsuit-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/technology/tiktok-bytedan...

crmd 4y ago

In the old days, parents had an unwritten responsibility to steer their kids away from neighborhood kids who are a bad influence. Their kids aren’t running around in the neighborhood any more; the bad influences are social media algorithms.

sigy 4y ago

This should surpise no one.

efitz 4y ago

There are two main problems with social media, as it exists today: First, the company that operates the social media system, has access to data that exposes extremely personal information about the users, sometimes directly, and sometimes through inference based on user behavior. This naturally attracts parties that might benefit from this information, originally advertisers, but increasingly nation states. Personally, I think the solution to this involves both privacy legislation, and legislation that dramatically restricts what foreign entities can do in the United States, but I acknowledge this is very controversial. Second, the algorithms that the social media site uses to decide what content to presented to users is extremely susceptible to manipulation and to causing undesirable side effects. Even if the site operator is benign, the algorithm might magnify, extreme or emotional content in order to maximize engagement. We have seen this for several years now. And, of course, the site operators may choose to amplify messaging that they like or suppress messaging that they don’t. This may seem great if your values align with the site operator, but remember that operators change, e.g., Twitter. And of course, the site operator might be hostile to your values, e.g., TikTok. I think that the solution to this problem is actually much easier than the solution to the first problem. The solution to algorithmic problems is to make the algorithm opt-in. For example, when you join a social media site, you initially might be presented with the option to use company, curated prioritization, or to use time and subscription-based prioritization. However, social media sites should be encouraged or perhaps forced to allow community curated, prioritization, and allow community members to opt into, a community feed versus the company curated feed. I think we would see a small number of users and communities who would quickly come up with their own curated feeds, that would be popular with like-minded individuals.

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

The conversation here dances around the topic, but nobody really talks about it. The same applies to almost every media outlet. Everyone is talking about something, but that is mostly irrelevant and doesn't give any insight. Interesting pattern.

Russell_Senpai 4y ago

I don't have a Business Insider subscription and don't plan on getting one. Any important, linkable sources that I can read instead?

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
Good intuition. Business Insider is almost entirely a propaganda outlet and not actually a business publication, insider or otherwise. The claim comes from an ex-employee from 2018. Most people want it to be true, so it is. I have no idea. My default for TikTok stories is that NOTHING they can do is not first made possible by Apple and Google who take zero blame in any of this. That right there tells me it’s all game. TikTok/China is being used to trick people into supporting more domestic spying.

greatjack613 4y ago

[flagged]

jasonm23 4y ago

> TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges I feel like "Had" should have been the word in quotes here.

throwaway2990 4y ago

Tiktok doesn’t need a back door for CCP to have access. It’s Chinese law that requires bytedance to hand over any information requested without question. No one can dispute this. It’s literally the law in China.

rain1 4y ago

[flagged]